In the electronic information age, people may share, access, and disseminate high volumes of information. The ease of disseminating information electronically is empowering. At the same time, the workforce has become increasingly mobile, and the ubiquity of high-speed Internet access, smart mobile devices, and portable storage means that “the office” may be anywhere. As a consequence, it has become more difficult than ever for organizations to prevent the loss of sensitive data. Organizations are therefore increasingly looking to Data Loss Prevention (“DLP”) solutions to protect their sensitive data.
Traditional DLP systems may employ a variety of heuristics and intercept data at a variety of points in a computing system in efforts to detect and regulate the flow of sensitive data. Unfortunately, heuristics may sometimes fail to detect sensitive data (e.g. if the data is encrypted), and traditional DLP systems may simply fail to intercept data in motion at certain points in a system. Ultimately, it may be impractical to completely eliminate false negatives from heuristic methods, and it may also be difficult to completely eliminate leak points from DLP systems. However, the vast majority of data loss incidents are unintentional. Accordingly, the instant disclosure addresses a need for systems and methods that help end users to avoid violating data-loss-prevention policies in the first place.